Check out this video clip: http://www.moveon.org/censure/caughtonvideo/

Today is Cleopatra's birthday. Tonight we headed over to the Florida Grammy showcase. DC3 played and were unbelievably good. I have to admit I love this band so much. Derek Cintron has the potential to be a huge star. And that's his real name. spent  an hour or so hanging with various scene buds and then headed out into the night. on the way down Washington I see this SUV ram this little car right in front of me. the little car stops but the SUV starts driving fast away. I rolled down my window and told the peeps in the little car to stay there. I floored it and chased the SUV down. I got up next to it, rolled down my window and yelled ‘you have to stop.’ He pulls over and thinks he hit me he is so drunk. I'm like, ‘you didn't hit my car. The car you hit is back on Washington still. I'll follow you.” He's like, “you’ll follow me?!” all snotty like “who do you think you are?” but then he got in and I followed him to the scene. Crazy people in Miami. if I wouldn’t have seen that guy and chased him down he just would have bailed on the scene after smashing that other guys car all up. Luckily for him no one was hurt. another day another good deed.

So far more than 4000 same sex couples have been married this year in San fran. Way to go San fran. More power to you. But on the other side of the coin, some little town in Tennessee passed a law this week making it possible for the state to sue same sex couples as a crime against nature. ??? seriously, I'm not making this up. o.k.... so we can drive SUVS and pollute the air, we can make animals extinct by killing them, and we can poison our water and earth by pouring toxic chemicals into it, and that's not a “crime against nature” but rather it is “just something that some people wish that other people wouldn’t do.” But if two people of the same sex want to hook up then that is a crime against nature. Wow. Leave it to Tennessee. Remember this is the same town that prosecuted a man in the 20’s for teaching evolution. Seriously. people like this still exist. Be careful. be very careful.

Recently read that over 2.9 million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the United States in the last three years. unfathomable. If there is such a thing as the anti-industrial revolution, then we’re in the thick of it. the AFLCIO has filed a law suit against the United States government for the lost jobs saying it is because they are being too lenient on china in their breaking of basic human rights and labor laws... it will be an interesting couple of years.

At the showcase tonight met THE man who produced the first joy division album way back when, which is cool. he says, ‘We have to try to save music, save the artists... I'm trying something new I'd like you to be a part of.... a website for digital distribution of music...’ I felt like saying ‘uh o.k. pal.’ O.k. so maybe he's done one too many hits of ecstasy the last few years, and to respond is kind of silly and superfluous, so instead I took off into night to let the wind blow through my hair while I attempted to drive 130 down the Macarthur causeway with no hands on the wheel while enjoying the beautiful 76 degree weather and the awe inspiring views of the Atlantic ocean on both sides. On the drive home I thought about this poor old man with his good intentions, and how if people would just get together and get serious about it, and if first they knew what the problems were in the industry, then maybe they could fix it. everyone’s freaking out now in the music biz. Granted. And for good reason. 1600 retail record stores closed last year. that's unbelievable. Tower records went bankrupt and word is that virgin is about to go under from no CD sales. O.k. fine. So what's the answer? How to save the artists and the music at the same time? these were my thoughts as I whizzed down the great highway.

So let it be said here once and for all and for the last time:  no particular order and off the top of my head from what I can remember from my wild ride home. One, we don't need any more new ideas in digital distribution. We’re there already o.k.? its been done. We’re doing it. You want to help save the music and the artists? here's the action plan since so many people seem not to see it. instead develop software that stops illegal downloading of music. period. And fuck what everyone else says about why we can’t do that. just do it. Music companies need to BUY legislation that forces computer manufacturers for even a brief time period to work with them to develop hardware and software that prevents people from downloading music from the Internet unless they pay their monthly fee—just like we do for cable and electric and phone service. Yes that's right, cut deals with all the Internet providers all over the world that makes everyone pay a monthly fee if they are going to download music from the net. If you hack in and steal music then you lose your Internet service until you pay your bill for all the music you downloaded illegally, and if that doesn’t work, you pay a fine or go to jail just like if you intentionally try to steal electric or cable or water or phone service. So that takes care of that. I don't even mind saying this even though every one I know except for the coolest of people are stealing music now illegally, even G2, even other musicians. Its total fucking cannibalism.

[I'll tell you a story. There's this guy in my office. I rent this office on Lincoln road on South beach overlooking the ocean where I do business. I run our record label from there. By night I'm writing, recording, rehearsing or performing with my boys, but when we’re not on tour I'm in that office by day cutting deals and trying to make it all happen for us. it’s a cool place to go and just even kick up your feet and get some reading done or hang out with people or toss the football around while I'm on the phone. its cool. and there's this guy the other day who sees the sleep with you CD. and he's like “so this it huh? Your new CD? and I'm like yeah check it out. so I throw him an open copy and he spends some time looking through it and he's just gaga over how good it looks and how beautiful the packaging looks. Because honestly G2 did do an amazing job on it. And then after like five minutes or more he says to me, so how can I get it? with this dumb look on his face. And I just look at him like .... and I say, ‘you can buy it from a store or from the Internet like any album. and he just looks at me. I knew he was drooling to own the CD but he was thinking that I was just going to give it to him because God knows why, you know, maybe because we saw each other every now and then or maybe just because he hasn’t bought a CD in years... its like people don't buy music anymore. They have this thing about buying cds... like they should all be free... its weird.]

So we need to change this. we need to get people to realize that yes the future is in the download. I believe that's true. but still owning the CD with the artwork and being able to take it with you on trips or have it in your car or blast it in your home stereo is a cool thing. lets face it, mammoth CD collections are still a very cool fucking thing. so we need to lower prices of CDs. call that action step number two. Record comps need to get CD prices down to ten bucks again. eleven or twelve for new releases at most. Maybe even less. Make it fun and cool and rewarding to own a CD like it should be, but make it affordable. For me personally two of my favorite artists are releasing cds this week. Phoenix from France and Janet Jackson. And I can’t wait to buy the cds. I already have them pre-ordered from Amazon. I would never fucking steal their music. I like them as artists. I want to support them. I want them to keep making albums forever for God sakes.

So step three has to be: seriously find a way to manufacture music CDs with anti-burning programs built in. You try to burn a professionally manufactured CD and it won't let you or better yet it blows up and crashes your whole system.. Hehe. Harsh words I know, but what are we going to do? sit and watch cds become a thing of the past and watch concert tickets rise to a hundred dollars a show? And like the Toad said, ‘man the worst part of this is that it has the potential to completely obliterate the ‘album’ as a tangible art form. Until the sixties no one even considered albums. The music business thrived on singles sales, on single songs rather than whole albums as one work of art, like a movie or painting. I like albums. And so do a lot of other artists and music lovers. Radiohead and metallica supposedly refuse to partake in the whole digital download of just one song for this very reason. They want people to buy their whole album and catch that vibe of the whole thing as a work of art in its entirety. I like that idea. Either way, if one more person hands me the new Radiohead CD they burned for me as a favor I swear to God I will fucking shoot them.

Step four: fix radio. Or better put, Unfix radio. Right now as it stands, to get a radio into rotation on commercial radio takes a minimum buy-in of $40,000. if you want to get into the top forty it takes a hundred thousand dollars. And if you want to get a record played enough that it makes it to number one? One million dollars. As a prominent radio promoter explained it to me recently, “Fishy this is the biggest problem we have in music today. labels thought they were being smart by paying radio all this money to get records played because it guaranteed their artists airplay, but what's its done is made it impossible for anyone other than very large companies to get music out to people. and now even for them it is such an expensive process that they may give it a try for an artist and if the album doesn’t sell a million copies they drop the artist and start from scratch with newer artists. for the music lover it sucks because we don't get a chance to hear much of what's available on the market, but only what the large record companies are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on... which is often crap because it was released for no other reason than it sounded somewhat like something else that already “made it.”

Step five: Unfix MTV or better yet, someone start another music video channel that plays music videos that are cool rather than what they're being paid to play. There are thousands of cool, innovative music videos being made every month, but we don't get to see them because MTV plays to the highest bidders. So we are bombarded by the ten newest nirvanas and the five newest beyonces and the twenty newest green days, but we never get to see the majority of the cooler more creative stuff that's being created out there. that sucks for all of us. MTV and the like are stifling the creativity in all of us. Someone needs to get some balls and some cash and revolutionize video music TV the same way MTV did twenty years ago.

Step six: record companies need to start getting some balls or some brains and start  remembering why we make music in the first place. because we like it. I can’t tell you how many times over the last six months since sleep with you was released that some record company rep has asked our manager about our sales before they even listened to the music or asked to listen to it. They don't even ask what the band sounds like. “good buzz about your band right now guys. What are sales like?” that's before they even ask what we sound like. Its crazy. Bros, in case you forgot... sales, that's your job. Our job is to make music. Your job is to be music lovers and sell the music because you like it and you know how to market it to other people who you think will like it as much as you do. if you don't like music, then do us all a favor and get the fuck out of the music business.

Step seven: record companies stop looking for the next yesterday’s big thing and start looking for tomorrow’s next big thing. Now everyone is trying to find the next dashboard confessional sound alike. Instead they should be trying to find who the next big dashboard confessional is going to be. Someone totally unique and different than Chris. It’s a no-brainer but for some reason its not happening as much as it should.